‘Superman & Batman’ movie will follow ‘Man of Steel’

Me neither. It would be weird for them to make all of those changes, and try to pass them off as the same characters. Not to mention from the things we'd been hearing earlier, I was under the impression that Affleck Batman was supposed to be older and more experienced then Bale's, and unless they try to say that there was another significant time jump between this and DKR or TDK, I just don't see that working.

 

I really would prefer that they/we ignore the Nolan films this go round, and let Affleck do his own thing.

That said, I was not excited to hear about Affleck being cast, but people I'm acquainted with who have worked with him say that he deserves the chance to make or break on his own. I will defer.

 

I've seen various cases of one iteration of a franchise being deliberately vague about whether or not it connected to a previous version -- it didn't actually fit, but it suggested enough of the look and feel of the other to fool the casual viewer. For instance, the current Avengers Assemble cartoon, despite being set in the same continuity as the Ultimate Spider-Man cartoon (and the later Hulk and the Agents of SMASH), is constantly aping elements of the Avengers movie and trying to pass itself off as a continuation -- while also pretending to be similar enough to the earlier Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes cartoon that people wanting or expecting a sequel to that will believe it is if they don't look too closely.

A similar case was the '90s Spider-Man Unlimited, which initially gave the impression of being a rough sequel series to the previous animated Spider-Man (even quoting its theme music briefly in the premiere episode), but eventually diverged enough that it was clearly unconnected. And then there's The Incredible Hulk -- now we recognize that it's part of the MCU and a reboot from the Ang Lee Hulk film, but at the time, since it wasn't a new origin story, it seemed like a loose sequel to a lot of people.

So I wouldn't be surprised if they went that route -- not actually in the Nolanverse, but implying a similar enough backstory that the casual viewer might think it is.

 

Superman Returns was a follow up to the Donner films. It was stated explicitly.

 

There were several things in TIH that seemed to directly reference the Ang Lee film at the time. Banner was in South America, he was trying not to become the Hulk, etc. It really did really leave you wondering how it fit with the previous film.

 

Yes, aside from retconning them so that they happened 20 years later and Lois was much younger. Also so that she somehow knew Superman was the father of her child even though he'd amnesia-kissed her into forgetting their whole relationship. It was never more than an imperfect pretense of a continuation. Although admittedly the same can be said of many sequels.

As for The Incredible Hulk, the main titles present a very different origin story that makes it clear it's unconnected to Lee's Hulk, but yes, there were some vague hints that implied it might be a continuation if you didn't look too closely. I guess there's a logic to pretending a reboot is a sequel if it helps draw in the original's audience. And most viewers don't dwell as much on details and inconsistencies as the hardcore fans do.

Although "trying not to become the Hulk" is pretty much part of every incarnation of the story I'm aware of, so I don't see how that's specifically a reference to Lee's film.

 

I guess it was really the beginning in Brazil that made me think it was connected to the original movie at the time. I don't think I paid attention or saw the opening credits at the time, probably because my wife and I were watching a lot of crappy bootlegged DVDs back then because we were new parents and stayed home a lot.

As for Superman Returns, Singer said it was a sequel, but I agree that he paid as much respect for the previous films' universe as Abrams does with the previous Star Trek universe.

 

The situations are a bit different. From the perspective of Abrams Trek all the prior films and episodes happened, then Nero and Spock went back in time and started an alternate timeline. From the perspective of Superman Returns, the first Superman film happened, something like the events of Superman II happened, but with certain differences, and the third and fourth films just didn't happen.

 

My Trek comment refers to the fact that Abrams pretends its the same universe but changes all the "rules" of the Trek verse around so it is nothing like the original universe. Similar, Singer said his movie was a sequel but then played fast and loose with the established premise.

 

Yes, I think that sounds right.

An example I often like to use is the (pre-Daniel Craig) James Bond movies. You would get in a Moore, Brosnan or Dalton film a reference to an older film - most often Tracy (from OHMSS), who was referred to in For Your Eyes Only and Licence to Kill. Or the myriad of references to older films in Die Another Day.

Nobody could really believe that Brosnan's 007 was running around in the 1960s, making jokes about the Beatles (as Connery did in Goldfinger) or that flinty, grim Dalton was the same man as smirky old lech Moore, but we were expected to accept that Bond was a man with a history, who'd been at this job for some time ('a cold war relic', I think he was called in Goldeneye). So you were free to imagine that Brosnan's 007 tackled Goldfinger, but that he made jokes about New Kids on the Block or Take That as he did so.

 

I didn't feel like opening a new thread for this, but I have no doubt that everyone here will love this video. It's pretty much a perfect tribute to the greatest superhero ever.
[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebXB0lBoaQ0[/yt]

 

I think this is kind of the problem with a character like Bond.

He is a product of the cold war, and fits best into that context. But while he can be successfully updated to a modern time, and "Goldeneye" was the first movie to do that, I think it was counter-productive for Brosnan's Bond to be a very "90s" Bond while still allegedly sharing history with his predecessors. It wasn't an easy fit at times. They'd have been much better of rebooting him like they did Craig. Except that the movie audiences in the mid-1990s probably wouldn't have been nearly as open to the idea of a reboot as they are today...

Of course with real world events going the way they are, chances are that James Bond as Cold War agent is going to become very relevant again, very soon...

 

That's not Sport Billy

 

I had no problem believing that he was the same man.

 

^Dalton and Moore? Or that Brosnan (who saw Goldfinger as a child in the cinema in the 1960s) was a double-oh agent in the 1960s?

 

Didn't Fleming distance Bond from the "Cold War" when evil organizations like SPECTRE became Bond's primary villains? The movies pretty much started with SPECTRE rather than SMERSH as Bond's foe.

 

A followup, yes. But Singer and the writers were always careful to state that the events of the Donner movies formed more of a "vague history" to SR than things that literally happened.

Which was kind of a no brainer, really, given the much younger age of the actors, and, oh yeah, the fact the world of SR looked radically different from that of the previous films.

 

Superman Returns did the same kind of soft rebooting that Marvel Comics does with its own continuity all the time. Peter Parker originally got his spider bite in the early 1960s, but these days when we see flashbacks to his origins, he has a cell phone and uses 2000s slang. Tony Stark was originally captured and injured by Communist forces in Vietnam, now it was by insurgents in Afghanistan. Reed Richards originally rushed his family into space in hopes of beating the Soviets to the Moon, now it was... I don't even know what the current rationale is.

Comic strips do the same thing. Calvin and Hobbes went through the seasonal cycle every year and celebrated Christmas every year for ten years straight, but Calvin remained six years old throughout. Charlie Brown and the Peanuts gang also went through regular annual cycles but only aged about 4-5 years' worth in the decades that the strip was being made, and characters who started out as infants, like Schroeder and Sally, eventually became near-contemporaries of the other characters.

 

So humor me on this question as I've only been skimming the thread recently and may have missed a detail.

But is the latest news saying that they're going to use Nolan's trilogy to give Batman a backstory in the same way that Singer used the first two Reeve films?